We missed Debrah and Justine, but enjoyed a delicious meal with strong French overtones!

Starters

Julie – chicken liver pate

A French classic, but with the twists of additional pistachios and port soaked raisins. It involved a lot of sieving, but was utterly delicious.

Jane – Pear, chicory, walnut and Roquefort salad

This was what Tracey had brought as a side, and Debrah would have too, had she been there. It was really tasty, especially the blue cheese dressing, but we decided that we didn’t need two of them, and forewent Tracey’s version, even though it was going to be with Janet’s home grown pears!

Mains

Sue – braised chicken in mustard

This involved lots of garlic, wine and white wine vinegar, and lots of Dijon mustard. We took issue with Raymond’s recipe – it looked like he’d suggested too much liquid, and possibly a typo with the heat of the oven. Tasty though!

Sides

Janet – dauphinoise potatoes

Raymond recommended Maris Pipers, but Waitrose let her down, so Janet got red ones instead, which worked well. Supposed to be sliced on a mandolin, but she used a food processor. He asked for ‘pinches’ of things, we agreed that teaspoons are more accurate. The cooking also took longer than expected. But that aside, we wanted to bury our heads in it, it was so delicious.

Puddings

Karen – upside down chocolate crumble

This was almost another duplicate, and it would have been no bad thing to eat it twice, a huge success. Very tricky to serve as it was so soft, but a lovely crunchy base – we thought we could have had double the base quite happily. Delicious as it was, but we thought we could also add raspberries or orange liqueur.